DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25309, 20 August 1943, Page 5

DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS

SIMPLIFIED RULES (PA..) WELLINGTON, Aug. 19. Proceedings for divorce are governed by the Matrimonial Causes Rules which were gazetted to-night. The Attorneygeneral, Mr H. G. R. Mason, in an interview, said that the new rules were prepared under the Rules Committee, a statutory body comprising representatives of the • Judiciary and the Law Society, the actual work in this instance having been done by a sub-committee presided over by Mr Justice Ostler. The operation of the rules would be delayed until December to enable practitioners to become conversant with them, the Minister said. Where the matter concerned was so important to the State as was the matrimonial status, certain care in procedure was necessary. The new rules were designed to have as much simplification as was consistent with that care. The existing code of rules had come into operation in 1909, and it seemed to him that it unfortunately embodied old English rules of practice which were somewhat incongruous in view of the modifications or adaptations that had been made in other matters in the practice of the Supreme Court of New Zealand. As an example of the simplification contained in the new rules, the Minister said that in other forms of proceedings summonses were ordinarily served by delivering a summons to the persons summoned, but in the divorce rules now being superseded a summons, or a citation as it was called, was served by giving the opposite parly merely a copy of it showing him the actual summons or citation and returning that summons to the court. There was no virtue in having this different method, and the divergence sometimes led to mistakes that were troublesome to correct. The new rules eliminated this and other incongruities.

There were, of course, many improvements too numerous to enumerate, said the Minister, but he had given the one mentioned by way of illustration. The net result of the new rules should be an appreciable simplification, with some saving of expense.